


The Depth of Skin

by Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory



Category: Will & Grace
Genre: Ambiguous Mental Illness, Angst, Basically messed up people being messed up, F/F, POV Second Person, Substance Abuse, mixed-orientation relationship, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 00:32:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3229484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory/pseuds/Lines_of_Pain_and_Glory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Gracie, tomorrow you’re going to get up out of this bed and put on some hideous blouse and some cute guy at a coffee shop is going to smile at you and you’re going to forget about this.  I’m going make myself martinis with little Vicodin garnishes and wish I could.”</p><p>Goes AU from “Bed, Bath, and Beyond.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Depth of Skin

You lie in bed staring blankly at that weird stain on the ceiling hoping you’ll just die there. You groan inwardly when the door opens again with a soft click. Why can’t they just leave you alone? You don’t want to be cheered up or comforted or whatever the hell they’re trying to do to you with the awful singing and creepy role-playing.

It’s Karen again. Too bad, you can distract Jack and beat Will with pillows, but Karen could take work to get rid of if that last incident didn’t scare her off. There’s still a chance that wasn’t a fluke though.

“Back for the make-up sex?” you demand, lacing each word with all the disgust and bitterness you can.

“Oh, Honey,” Karen sinks down on the bed next to you, “you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

She sounds just a bit too breathy. Your eyes snap into focus on the face above you, but as usual you can’t be sure Karen was making fun of you (Stupid Botox!), so you just end up lying on your back staring up at Karen.

“Do you think I’m pretty?” God, did you say that out loud? The alcohol in the air must be getting to you. Yeah, that has to be it because Karen’s mouth is moving closer and closer to your own. Is that why she’s hung around all these years? As she slips her tongue between your lips, you realize you don’t care if that is the only reason. It’s enough to feel wanted by someone, anyone, better Karen than anyone actually. This way you don’t have to care that you haven’t shaved in days, that you probably smell, that your hair looks like crap. You just have to lay here and pretend that the hands sliding over your breasts mean something other than that Karen’s a little crazy and probably more than a little high.

It isn’t as hard as it should be. Really, you wonder why you put so much effort into pushing her away. Maybe because you’re not gay? Maybe because you don’t want to hurt her? Like Will hurt you? Like Nathan hurt you? You cry then, ragged, shuddering, ugly, inconsolable sobs. “Gracie?” Karen whispers, withdrawing quickly. “Gracie, don’t cry, I…I didn’t mean anything by it. You know me, crazy--” 

“This isn’t about you,” you cut her off with a withering look and just to prove it you grab a handful of the front of her blouse and pull her into another kiss, bruising and desperate, until your lungs burn and your neck aches and you fall back exhausted into the mountain of accent pillows. 

It shouldn’t make any difference that Karen kissed you first, she should still say something snarky like, “Wow, slow down, Lezzie McGuire,” and run, but she doesn’t. Her voice is so soft, you never would have heard it if her lips weren’t next to your ear. “I know it isn’t what you want, Honey, but you’ll always have me.” 

You pull back, staring with red-rimmed disbelieving eyes. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” The motorcycle, the bad advice…

Karen looks away guiltily. “I don’t know what you’re talking--”

She had. “Look at me!” You jump up to stand on the bed, ripping off your clothes angrily like it’s some kind of a metaphor. “Look what you did to me. Are you happy, Karen?” 

“No, but misery loves company, am I right?” And then Karen should laugh, all high-pitched and breathy and grating, laugh at you for still having dreams like being “happy,” but she doesn’t.

You fall hopelessly to your knees on the bed. You don’t resist when Karen reaches for you, pulls your head to her breast. 

They’re nice…Karen’s breasts, warm and soft. You were always jealous of girls with big breasts, the kind guys can’t take their eyes off of, the kind that jiggle when you run or when you, you know…what’s wrong with you? Besides all the things that were wrong with you five minutes ago.

Karen combs her fingers through the tangle of your hair. “I think you’re beautiful, Honey…but don’t go telling anyone I said that.”

You want to laugh. You can’t imagine how you’d tell anyone about this. You can see Will’s doubtful expression, “Are you sure she was talking to you and not…I don’t know the voices in her head?”

You start pulling open the buttons of Karen’s blouse with trembling fingers. This is what you want, more than anything: someone who won’t ever leave you. That isn’t Will. He’ll fall in love and you two won’t be the same because it wouldn’t be healthy if you were and Will is healthy, healthy and reasonable and some reasonable, healthy guy will love him for that. You’re damaged and crazy and so is Karen.

“Tell me you love me,” you whisper. Love, obsession, close enough.

“Gracie,” Karen stills your hands and the eyes staring into yours are way too lucid for your comfort, “tomorrow you’re going to get up out of this bed and put on some hideous blouse and some cute guy at a coffee shop is going to smile at you and you’re going to forget about this. I’m going make myself martinis with little Vicodin garnishes…” Karen slides off the bed, doing back up her blouse, “and wish I could.”

You sit back hard on your heels. It hurts because it’s true.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper to the door as it closes quietly behind Karen, but you’re not sure what you’re sorry for. You never did anything to deserve the way she looked at you. You’re sorry you’re not stronger, not braver, not brave enough to throw away those pictures, not the ones under your bed, of you in eighth grade with braces, of the first time you ever got your heart broken, but the ones playing on a loop inside your head, of how your life was supposed to turn out, of the Jewish doctor who was supposed to fall in love with you, of how your hair was supposed to look, straight and shiny and perfect, on that day he got down on one knee, of what your kids were going to look like… You didn’t need any help from Karen to lose Nathan. He left because you kept comparing him to those pictures and he knew he could never live up to that. You’re never going to live up to them either. You wish you could smile back at that guy in the coffee shop and pay for your own lattes.

“Sorry, I’m meeting my girlfriend.”

“Darn,” he has a smile like a toothpaste commercial and an accent for some reason, “all the pretty ones are gay or taken…or both.”

“I get that a lot.” And you laugh as you walk away because you remember the first time you met Karen. Your hair was frizzy and you’d spilled on your cardigan.

“Do you know how to get a coffee stain out of cashmere?”

“No, I just throw those away now… but you’re in luck because I do remember how to get a gravy stain out of polyester,” and she laughed in that way that makes you want to slap her. 

You looked like crap that day too and you said something stupid and something kind of rude within the first thirty seconds (which Karen had deserved because it was a cashmere blend) and none of that had mattered because that’s true love, the kind you just can’t seem to screw up no matter how hard you try to.

 

“Am I crazy?” You curl your arms protectively around your legs on the couch, waiting for Will to laugh at you.

“Yes! Karen?” He flails his arms around like he’s hoping to find the words for how crazy that is somewhere in the air between the mantle and the coffee table and then he gives up and sits down next to you.

“Grace,” he’s using his reasonable adult voice, but what he uses it to say isn’t what you’re expecting to hear at all, “I got to a point in my life where I realized what I was doing wasn’t working too.”

“Yeah, I remember. I was there, Dumbass!” You try to hit him with a pillow, which he grabs.

“Would you let me finish?”

“Fine.” You sulk a little.

“Grace, I don’t think this is the right answer for you.” He stares at you with concern. That was what you were expecting to hear. “But I love you and I want you to be happy and I’m going to support you through whatever it takes to get there…even Karen.”

 

You stare at yourself in the bathroom mirror and wonder how you ever fooled yourself into thinking you didn’t feel that way about her, when you already can’t remember which panties were Nathan’s favorite, but you remember perfectly, the dress you wore, the shoes, how you did your hair and makeup on that one day when she walked into work and pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head and said, “You… You don’t look terrible… Am I on Candid Camera?” You couldn’t stop smiling whenever Karen wasn’t watching because that was like anybody else saying you looked radiant…it was better than anyone else saying you looked radiant.

 

You just stand on the doorstep thinking, “This is stupid. This is crazy. She’s just going to make fun of me,” and then Rosario swings the door open brandishing a spray bottle at you threateningly. 

“The boss lady won’t even get out of bed to drink. Do you know anything about this?”

“I…”

“Fix it!”

“Ouch, ok!”

 

“Oh, hey, Honey,” her voice is falsely bright, “you want a White Russian?” She raises her glass. She looks perfect, not a hair out of place or a smudge in her makeup because that’s Karen, laugh so they don’t see you crying, fill in the holes and paint them over, like a manicure for your heart. “Or a Black Russian? I think I still have one of those in the basement…if Rosario remembered to feed him.” And she laughs manically at her own creepy joke and you wonder again if either one of you is sane or if it matters.

“I was hoping maybe we could talk.” You sit down on the bed.

“So clingy,” Karen mutters not really under her breath, “this is why I quit straight girls or was it straight boys…or heroin addicts? Sea monkeys?” She taps a finger to her lips. “Oh, well, vodka under the bridge!” And she knocks back her drink in one gulp.

You stare at her. “Sea monkeys?”

“Flying monkeys?” She stares back.

“What?”

“Oh, good, you don’t remember what we were talking about either.” Karen raises her glass again looking vaguely confused to find it empty.

“Do you love me or not?” you blurt out. “Because I’m here, Karen. I got out of bed and I took a shower and I still didn’t want to go get coffee with some guy because I don’t need anyone else to remind me I’m not good enough. I have you.”

“Honey, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard…and I’ve seen Jackie’s new one woman show.”

And then Karen kisses you and the world gets all boozy and hazy and spin-y again and you can’t write it off as just a contact high anymore.

“Is that a yes?”

“Do you still want to talk?”

No, you want to take her apart, pulling pins out of her hair and smearing lipstick everywhere until she’s just as much of a mess as you are. You want to feel her nails scraping down your sides, tearing the mask of the nice Jewish girl who wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t want to do this, to ribbons.

 

You do it at work, leaning back against Karen’s desk, your legs shaking too much to stand on your own. You do it in dressing rooms at Bloomingdale’s, panties stuffed into your mouth to keep you quiet. You do it in nightclub bathrooms not caring who might be watching and sometimes you’re surprised you never see it on the society pages: Karen Walker on her knees eating pussy. You do it in the back of limousines, champagne bubbles tingling in your mouths between kisses, and on yachts in the Riviera, the wind never tangling your perfect shiny hair. 

Ambassador Rosenfeld tells you at dinner that he’d love to show you around Jerusalem sometime and you just smile and go home with Karen, whose kisses still make you dizzy even though the bottles sit untouched…one more thing for Rosario to complain about having to dust.

 

“Would you love me if I was poor?”

She wouldn’t be Karen if she was poor. “Would you love me if I got fat?” 

“Oh, Gracie,” she sighs, “I never thought I’d find another girl as shallow as I am.”

You stare up at your perfectly toned stomach in the mirror on the ceiling (Trainer and Plastic Surgeon do amazing work) and think maybe you’re happy. You love Will’s kids. You love that you can send them home. Your dreams were never what you thought.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a first draft of this way back in 2007, but I’m still going to credit Lena Dunham for that last line because I never would have dug it back up for an edit if the line from “Girls” hadn’t made me think of it.


End file.
